Tactic Experience Brings Checkmate with Fewer Than Two Seconds Remaining
As you look at the image below, your eyes may be drawn to the lone, vulnerable black king on h8 in the upper right corner. However, before you begin analyzing the positions of the players in depth, look at the time remaining for each player, particularly white.
As the image shows, the clock is winding down rapidly. Only a few seconds remain for each player. Playing white in a 5-minute blitz game, I should have been comfortable with my status: 2 extra knights and a 5-pawn advantage. But I had serious time problems.
After 32 moves, my remaining time was fewer than 9 seconds. My opponent had more than a 15-second advantage and by simply moving quickly would soon be able to win the game on time. The board position is as shown in the following diagram.
At moments like these, having trained with the tactics program can help in speedily picking the best moves to make. I wanted to keep the enemy king on the back rank, my two rooks together to support each other, and a knight near the enemy king to help coordinate an attack on him.
Trying to avoid losing the game on time, I made the next three moves in 5.6 seconds – and my opponent made 3 moves in 9.5 seconds and still had an 11-second advantage. After his 35th move, I had only 3.2 seconds remaining on my clock. The board had now changed to the position shown in the following diagram.
In his last move, my opponent moved his remaining rook to attack my knight near his king. Rather than being distracted by his move, I chose Rxh7# in only 2.1 seconds, which ended the game (as shown in the first image) and saved me from being defeated on time. Combining a rook and knight to checkmate a king is known as an “Arabian Mate,” a topic that I had posted on this blog last year as well as a tactic that I have practiced as a basic checkmate pattern.
Had I not been familiar with this tactic, I could have easily lost the game. Knowledge of tactics once again has proven invaluable. Stay alert for these situations as you play blitz games.
Ray Linville’s high point as a chess player occurred when he swiped the queen of GM Hikaru Nakamura in a 60-second bullet game in 2021. This game was reported in a “My Best Move” column of the Chess Life magazine, published by the U.S. Chess Federation.
At Chess.com, he has been an editor (part-time) since 2019 and has edited news articles and tournament reports—including those of the Candidates and World Championship Tournaments and other major events—by titled players and noted chess writers as well as Game of the Day annotations by leading grandmasters. He has also been a contributing writer of chess terms, e-books, and general interest articles for ChessKid.com.
He enjoys “top blogger” status at Chess.com. His blog has won the award for Best Chess Blog from the Chess Journalists of America for several years. In addition, he has also been the recipient of first-place CJA awards for feature article, humorous contribution, online review, and educational lesson as well as honorable mention in the categories of personal narrative and historical article.